


Revenir

by EliMorgan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Blood and Violence, Cults, Dark Magic, Dark!Hermione, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Extremely Dark Themes, F/F, F/M, M/M, Magical Creatures, Major Character Injury, Medical Examiner!Hermione, Minor Character Death, Multi, Murder, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Torture, Poor Science, Ritual Magic, Sexual Content, Thriller, Torture, Weasley Family Bashing (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2019-09-26 16:30:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17145194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EliMorgan/pseuds/EliMorgan
Summary: Revenir [fr.]: To Come Back, To Return.The death of a prominent Ministry official drags Hermione into Hades, from where she will change the world.Dark!Hermione. Extremely Dark Themes. Polyfic.





	1. Part One: Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> **I do not own the work made use of herein, none of the Harry Potter features or characters belong to me. I make no money from this work.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Hi!  
> As Iacta Alea Est draws to a close, and Ghost continues to be difficult to wrangle, the plot-bunnies left me this gift, which may bear some resemblance to my old fic The Girl Goes Wild, but also mostly not. I'm trying it out as an idea, so feedback would be welcome.  
> It's much darker than my usual stuff, and I've never gone this dark before, so bear with me while I navigate this world, please?  
> Not sure about an update schedule, but I'll try to be at least somewhat regular.  
> Eliza x

**Friday. 0300.**

_Blood ran thick, slick, the floor soaked in it, gurgling obscenely as if drinking of the bounty laid out. It crept up, a drowning wave, sucking everything in its wake beneath, leaving the walls awash with browning residue and the residents of the room backing away, not from horror, but to protect their precious, polished shoes from the torrent. All but her, who lay in it, bathed in it, reveled in the spillage and desecration, her legs sliding against each other within, erotic, horrifying._

_And the screaming, like music, something to be enjoyed or ignored as it filled the room, high-pitched, cracking as the throat reached its limit, gurgling through as thick, red liquid filled there, too._

_A cackle, triumphant, gleeful, as creeping darkness obscured the vision, snuffing it, leaving but the remnants of a shrill cry, tapering off, leaving blackness._

Only when it started up again in the cold, sharp reality did Hermione realise it was the Floo.

"Bugger," she swore, glaring at the ceiling.

* * *

"There you are, Granger. Where the bloody hell have you been? What part of 'on-call' is so difficult for you to understand?"

Hermione blinked slowly, uncomprehendingly. It was too early. There was no coffee. There was, however, a shrieking head in her fireplace, and it appeared to be her boss. "Doctor Gillies?"

Gillies scowled at her. "Get over here. Now."

* * *

**0345.**

The lab was freezing, sterile white and blinding. She had to shade her eyes as she entered, to the pleasure of their night receptionist, Katya. The woman smirked at her, lifting her mug with sly pleasure, sipping leisurely. Despite knowing that whatever was in there, it was not coffee, Hermione couldn't help the covetous glare.

"Don't fucking dawdle!" Doctor Gillies boomed over the intercom, eliciting a little shriek from Hermione at the volume. Katya winced, rubbing her sensitive ears with a censorious glare for their office door.

"One of these days," she said wistfully.

Hermione plodded through, attempting fruitlessly to wake herself up. She slapped her fingers lightly against her cheeks, then harder, her flesh reddening, giving her at least the appearance of life. She'd barely managed to dress in her haste, the slacks on her legs doing nothing to protect her from the morning chill, something that made her both uncomfortable and yet provided her with enough of a shock to keep her awake. Her hands moved from her face down to her arms, running furiously.

Gillies emerged from his office when she entered the corridor that connected their rooms and the labs. He looked like the proverbial shit, really, but that was no change - the super fun part about Edward Gillies was that as well as being the only Magical Medical Examiner in Britain, he looked the part, too; all long, spidery limbs, wisps of white hair and giant, sunken eyes. If he'd been a model, she mused, would their department have been more successful? She doubted it. It was only a small place compared to other Ministry departments, for Wizarding people were just as reluctant as Muggles to acknowledge death, different only in that wizards managed, somehow, to bury their heads even deeper in the sand. Their budget was laughably small, made more so by the fact that the Wizengamot was apt to describe their muggle-inspired practices as 'barbaric', but due to her War stipend and Gillies' family money they managed to keep running, if only in the meantime, until a miracle occurred and the Ministry opened their eyes to how important their work truly was.

Hermione liked her job. She knew that most of her friends, people she grew up with, and those who only knew of her from rumours, had all expected her to go into politics, or the Auror corps, or even the Department of Mysteries, and she'd agreed - until the day she'd met Doctor Gillies.

He was a revolutionary, adored throughout his small field.

She was a revolutionary, in the more literal sense of the word.

They got along well.

"Morning," Hermione said meaningfully, with a glance at the clock.

"Fuck off." Gillies was not a morning person. Which made two of them. He rubbed his hands across a pale, sallow face and grimaced. "Got a message from the Minister himself."

Gillies never liked to speak in whole sentences, nor was he fond of giving out more information than was needed at the precise second he was speaking. Frustrating as all Hell, if she was honest, but it had made her apprenticeship simpler, if nothing else. "La-Dee-da," she mocked, falling into step with him as he led the way through to the cold room, where the floo had been specifically enlarged to allow for the transport of their patients. "Someone's going up in the world."

A poisonous look from his muddy brown eyes. "At the risk of repeating myself, Granger:  _fuck off."_

"We should get you a swear jar."

"Try it, Granger, and I'll show you what I learned on my preservation course last month." Now in the cold room, Hermione moved to one side of the fireplace shield while Gillies took the other, and with tired arms, began turning the crank that would lift it. For obvious reasons, the fireplace was kept in a closed off area, warded and separate from the rest of the room, unreachable until they lifted the shield. It was the only Floo in the department, and heavily monitored.  _Why_ it had to be a muggle guard, Gillies had never said, but, again - he didn't much like explaining himself. "Some asshole got killed. Big Ministry star. Wants us -  _you_ \- on it."

Unsurprising. Kingsley felt he owed her a lot after she took some curses for him on that ride to the Burrow years ago, and continued to pay her back in spades. Her official title was 'Morgue Assistant', but she was the unofficial liaison between this place and the Auror department, too, meaning that when she wasn't watching Gillies cut into people she was up there with the chosen few, running down witnesses and haranguing the experts down the hall in forensics for faster turnabout on evidence. At the very least, it helped her keep up a tan. Something Gillies had never been acquainted with (nor Katya, but that was more about biology than underground living).

"Any idea who?"

Gillies shot her a look that she'd seen many times before, his ' _like I give a toss'_ look. "Some woman."

Great. So much for preparedness.

He tapped his foot impatiently and glanced at his watch. "Five, four, three-"

Flamed ignited in the grate with a  _whoosh_ of energy, bursting high into the air. The light tinted everything in the sterile, white room lime green, including Hermione's vision, causing her to, as always, rub at her irritated eyes. "Alright, 'Doc'?" a familiar voice said, needlessly layering sarcasm onto his title. Purebloods could never understand why he'd take on a Muggle title, but Hermione got it - there was no Magical equivalent, not with 'Healer' sounding so ironic. Besides, his degree from Birmingham gave him the right to claim it, so why shouldn't he?

"Lay her on the table, Mr. Flint," Gillies was directing as they levitated a figure clad in a clean, white sheet over to the table. Marcus Flint was joined by some Hufflepuff a few years younger than her, who gawked around like it was his first visit to Diagon Alley. Flint had been delivering their patients for two years, now, but Gillies had never warmed up to him. " _Carefully_ , you ogre!"

Flint leapt to correct his trajectory, thankfully breaking from his customary leering. Hermione could count on one hand the amount of words they'd exchanged, yet each and every time the neanderthal wandered in he gave her a once-over so disgustingly thorough that it deteriorated into obscene staring, complete with smacking of lips and tongue action.

The body, saved from an unpleasant collision with their filing cabinets, came to rest with a thud on a long, wide metal slab about the size of a Hogwarts four-poster. Flint and his pet Hufflepuff backed off, Flint fishing inside his regulation robes for the paperwork. "Can't say I'm sad to see 'er go," he grunted, nodding at his charge while he enlarged a bundle of parchment. Handing it over to Gillies, he gave a mean smile. "She was fun in 'er day, like, but a bit stuck up in the end."

Gillies slowly raised an eyebrow, his entire manner unwelcoming. "Your input is appreciated," he informed Flint, drawing out the words while the other man preened, and then added a nasty smile. "Now get the fuck out of my lab."

* * *

**0430.**

A while later, scrubbed up, skin stinging from the anti-everything wash they commissioned specifically from Malfoy Potioneers, Hermione faced Gillies over the table. He was flipping through the paperwork idly, and she was sipping coffee from a travel mug with the lid screwed on so tightly she wasn't convinced Katya hadn't welded it into place. The coffee was swill, but it was one of those times when she just didn't notice, so delighted was she to have the sweet ambrosia back in her hands.

"Discovered by her neighbour at oh-one-hundred hours, when the woman went around to complain about the cats yowling. Hadn't been seen for days before - blah-blah-blah irrelevant shite - scene's untouched, but the pigs in forensics will be on that soon - more irrelevant shite - estimated time of death, midnight, three days ago."

"Samhain," Hermione said, then didn't quite know why. Gillies shot her a chastising look before continuing on his - heavily truncated - reading of the file. It was part of their ritual, to let them know what they were looking at before they even so much as looked at the corpse. Others preferred to get stuck in without any prior information, but Gillies and she were more cerebral than that. They liked a fuller picture of a case. Or, rather,  _she_ did. Gillies did it because he knew she would be useless until her questions were answered, and even then, she'd have to comb through the file with a fine tooth comb before she let it go.

Hence, the liberal editing. He tried to get away with taking out more and more information each time; it was a game they played. Or, a game to her. He, likely, was being serious.

"We have a name?" she asked,  _again_.

Gillies' long face became disturbingly coy, as it had every time she'd asked. "You'll like it," he told her, stroking the corners of the paper with almost sexual pleasure.  _Ugh_. "Impatient."

"It's not even six in the morning, Doctor. I just want to do my job."

He looked disappointed, but his hand belied the expression when it strayed eagerly to the corner of the sheet. "You used to be fun," he admonished, childishly, causing her eyebrows to shoot up and join with her hairline.

"Well you never bloody were," she snapped, and yanked her corner of the sheet down with perhaps more force than necessary.

She froze.

A stout, thick woman in her sixties lay on the slab, face tilted upwards, neck supported by a block. That was the sum total of what was normal about this body.

"Merlin-!" Mortified but unable to control it, Hermione spun to the nearest sink as nausea racked her body, forcing last night's chippy and her much-coveted coffee back the way they'd come, explosively. Over by the table, Gillies hummed in consideration.

"Cats got her, then," he said, needlessly. "Must have been starving, poor buggers. Or took exception to her personality. Wouldn't blame them. You done yet?"

The last of her stomach contents evacuated on the heels of burning bile and Hermione straightened, covering her mouth with a paper towel she conjured. Her voice was weak when she asked, "Is that..?"

"Dolores Umbridge?" Gillies grinned.  _Grinned._ Hermione didn't think he'd even grinned on his wedding day. "Looks like it. Bitch."

If that grin only widened and became more malicious as the examination went on, Hermione wasn't going to say anything about it. After all, she thought, watching him choose a scalpel with exquisite care, his coat stretching across his chest until she could see the corner of his Azkaban tattoo; he was a Muggleborn, too.


	2. Part One: Chapter Two

**Friday. 0557.**

"Beginning the post-mortem examination of Madame Dolores Umbridge; Case-file 046581. The date is the third of November, the time is oh-five-fifty-seven hours. Performed by Doctor Edward Gillies, assisted by Doctor Hermione Granger."

Performing the autopsy on Umbridge was more difficult than Hermione had been expecting. In general, performing it on anyone she'd known would have been a problem, but there was something about Umbridge, about the way she had been in life so much of a personality. A horrible, genuinely evil one, but a personality all the same. And now she lay, stiff and ugly, on a metal bench in her laboratory like no more than a wax doll. She couldn't help her gaze straying to her face, imagining the unseeing eyes beneath lids which some empathetic young soul had closed. Really, the woman had lived long past her time - by all rights, she should have been killed by the centaurs, years ago, and Hermione felt no guilt about that - but there was just  _something_ about the woman in death, some ghost that seemed attached to her body, haunting them.

"Samples have been taken of her skin and hair," Doctor Gillies reported, moving over to the test-tubes, bags and bowls that covered a stainless steel table by their side. "According to procedure, as has been noted on recording 046581-B. Her clothes have been removed to the forensics lab for testing, using the  _mortus divestio._ The decedent is now ready for autopsy, which I shall begin by examining the surface."

Gillies snapped his gloves once, twice, as was his ritual, before turning to pull the sheet back and off. Hermione was waiting to catch it, folding carefully to set aside under a stasis charm. When she turned back, she gaped.

She'd known it would be bad. She hadn't watched him remove the clothes, too busy washing the taste of vomit from her mouth, but the remains of them had been shredded, molded to her skin and patches had been eaten away by whatever cats had been desperate enough to get at her skin. She hadn't applied her knowledge to the rest of her body, though. Just the face had been enough to give her nightmares.

The woman's breasts and stomach had provided most of the meal, it seemed, which was unsurprising, in its way, for Hermione remembered that she'd carried extra weight there. The hips, too, had received a spare nibble, and the flesh had been stripped from her thighs, showing the glossy pink and white of her muscle and bone. Her calves were white, whole, and Hermione was reminded of the white knee-high socks the woman had worn in a parody of schoolgirl innocence; she'd been wearing them at the time of her death. Even the cats showed no inclination of wanting to strip them from her.

Large, flat-footed feet completed the corpse, her nails painted a garish pink.

Hermione moved back up the body as Gillies described its state for the benefit of the recorder, pushing and prodding at various parts of her to measure her state of decomposition. The stench said it all, really; she smelled  _foul._ Death was a scent Hermione had become familiar with in all of its forms, but even she - even  _Gillies_ , who had always seemed to revel in every aspect of his patients - had activated a low-level bubble head charm upon removal of the corpse's environmental protection charm, for her smell had been so strong it had felt like a physical attack. Sweet, somehow sticky, and sickening, the effect magnified by the underlying perfume she'd been wearing at the time.

Hermione frowned when she reached the chest again, spotting a dark splodge of something on a flap of flesh that hung loosely down around her ribs. Snapping her fingers to draw Gillies' attention, she, as gently as she could, lifted it and smoothed it back into position, raising her eyebrows as the markings on the skin formed a shape. Gillies swore, moving to the other side to attempt to piece together the loose flesh there, too. They worked at that for a moment in silence, before they'd replaced all the flesh they could, and stood, staring, at the interrupted shape on her sternum.

"Isn't that  _Berkana_?" Gillies wondered, his voice full of intellectual curiosity.

"For rebirth. Yes." Hermione shared none of his calm. In fact, she was  _freaking out_  inside, wondering exactly what this would mean. Frantically, she searched the rest of what little flesh she could see; little black splodges covered more of her flesh, she realised, but most were too decimated to decipher. She caught the tail end of what might have been the rune for 'gift', and the tip of 'yew' before she had to give up. Reporting her findings to Gillies, his scientific delight faltered, and he quickly suspended the inspection aloud on the recorder.

"Well, this'll be fun, kiddo," he muttered, kneeling down where she'd found the 'yew' rune. "Looks like we've got ourselves a good old fashioned ritual sacrifice."

* * *

**0825.**

Hermione strode through the Ministry up towards the Auror Corps, one hand tapping impatiently against her thigh. Her face was the blank mask she'd perfected during the first year on the job, when she'd found that wandering about looking dazed and somewhat disgusted didn't endear her to anyone. Of course, they didn't know that it was from the lingering smell of rotting flesh in her nose, so they tended to take it personally.

The secretary for the DMLE nodded at her as she passed, and Hermione stopped to hand over a fresh croissant she'd cited as an emergency to collect. Which it had been, sort of. She'd had to shower, get dressed and inspect a dead woman, all before breakfast. She'd deserved it.

So, too, did Pansy Parkinson, who worked that desk day-in, day-out. She knew the offices under her domain like the back of her hand, knew the names and ranks of all who dwelled there. She knew their families' birthdays, their friends' crises, which ones had mistresses and which had venereal diseases. None of them appreciated it, and as for respect?

" _Why would we respect some Death Eater's whore?"_ they asked incredulously. " _She's lucky to have escaped Azkaban."_

Dawn to dusk, that girl slaved away, despite being told that her job was as dead-end as it got, filing their paperwork, correcting their spelling errors, ensuring evidence was returned safely to the vault and juggling their personal lives to boot. She was pleasant and polite to all who came through the doors, even that feral werewolf who'd wandered in just a half-hour before moonrise in the hopes of making her a midnight snack.

In Hermione's eyes, the bitch deserved an Order of Merlin, just for  _that_.

Still, one day she'd snap and go on a rampage, so Hermione brought her pastry to assure her that she was appreciated at least by Hermione, and also, in the hopes that when that day came and Pansy laid the government to waste, she'd remember the feel of it melting into her mouth and perhaps spare her.

A girl could hope.

"Morning, Parkinson," Hermione greeted her, dumping the little white bag on the table.

"It is that, and that's all I'll say on the subject. Apricot jam?" Hermione dropped the little container on the table and Pansy let out a dreamy sigh. "The muggles do some things right, at least."

"Your low-key blood purism gets more and more subtle every day," Hermione told her wryly, resting on the desk with her elbows as Pansy produced a dainty knife and fork set. "It's half past eight, surely there hasn't been time for your morning to be that bad?"

Pansy favoured her with a look that suggested she had been born an idiot and that trait had only increased with time. "Let me see. Oh, yes. I was called in at four because, and I quote, 'if the Aurors are in, you are in. Honestly, Pansy, I'm having difficulty understanding why you're not there  _already'_. Once here, I was greeted by a pinch to the arse by Flint, three propositions from your gross ginger friend, a lecture by Madame Winston on the joys of punctuality - it seems the secret to punctuality is telepathy, or at the very least, some psychic skill, by the way - and a pile of unfinished paperwork on the Umbridge case. I suppose that's why you're here, by the way. Don't tell me you're exhausted, I won't pity you. At least  _you_  get to cut the bitch up."

Hermione laughed slightly. "Trust me, it was not as satisfying as you're imagining. We've not even gotten to the slicing and dicing yet. The bloody toad just  _had_  to throw a wrench in there, so it's suspended until I talk to the lead investigator."

Pansy grimaced. "Don't tell me that, I've been having the most satisfying daydreams. You'll be pleased, though. It's the Wonder Twins' case."

"I am  _delighted,"_  she muttered sarcastically. "And where can I find them?"

Pansy leaned over to a stack of parchment Hermione recognised as her sign-in book. Pansy had introduced it herself, to the disdain of her colleagues, but they'd eventually given in, if only when Harry himself had ordered them to. The Chosen One had significant sway among his peers, despite being a run-of-the-mill Investigative Auror. He'd marched them up to the desk one by one and had them link their wands to it, so that one tap of the wand as they came on shift would allow it to track their movements until they signed back out again. Not at all fancy, it was simply a stack of parchment listing names and locations, but it says enough for Pansy, their partners, the Head Auror and even the Minister, and proved especially useful when it came to taking cases before the Wizengamot, or should grievances be filed against one of the team.

Wistfully, Hermione wished again that their department provided the kind of excitement that would lure Pansy to them. Katya was great, but Pansy was phenomenal.

"Looks like they're at the scene, still," Pansy told her, using her free hand to tear the end off her croissant and dip it in the open jar of jam. "Probably found something, or just waiting for you. They know better by now than to leave before you've had your say."

Hermione could admit to feeling a little smug about that. She'd been the reason several cases had broken in the past, and she wasn't too modest to admit it. By now, most Aurors had gotten into the habit of waiting for her, but never had they waited - she checked her watch - five hours.

"Don't be too flattered," Pansy said, as if reading her mind, licking buttery residue from her fingers as she swallowed her pastry. "They only got in at six, nicked the case off Blundering Bob McGee.  _And_  they had time for breakfast - I could smell the bacon on them. Almost took a bite right out of one or the other. I'm not choosy."

"You're grim, Parkinson. Got an address?"

The secretary smiled, showing all of her teeth, and scribbled something down on a corner of parchment. She went to hand it over, but snatched it back at the last second. "Coffee later?" she asked, quietly, so that no-one else could overhear.

"Max's opens at six. Will that work?"

"Perfect." She passed over the note with a polite smile. "Enjoy!"

Hermione stuck her tongue out childishly, and went to flee the department, only to slam into a figure just outside the door.

"Merlin, I'm so sorry," she apologised, offering a hand to the crumpled woman. Tall, thin, and elegant, she turned a dark veil-covered face up to hers. Hermione cringed back at the sight, shame crawling on her skin. " _So_ sorry," she reiterated with feeling, withdrawing her hand.

"It is no problem," the War Widow said, calmly. She pulled herself to her feet with very little trouble, as Hermione averted her eyes. "Please, don't let me keep you."

Reminded of her goal, Hermione stuttered out another apology, but the Widow merely inclined her head and glided off. Struck dumb by her own idiocy, Hermione paused a moment more, before the urgency of her job caught up to her and she fled the Ministry, swiftly forgetting the encounter.

* * *

**0915.**

Umbridge's townhouse was exactly what one would expect. Nestled down a sleepy street in Hampstead, the place looked perfectly normal from the outside, an impression that was shattered the moment one stepped through the door.

The floors were carpeted in a bright, Calpol pink, the walls painted white with hot pink panelling. Those horrific feline plates that had haunted Hermione throughout her fifth year had apparently come in bulk, for the godforsaken things dotted the walls. No evidence of a God here; despite the death, the living cats, and the dozens of clumsy, trampling lawmen flitting in and out of the house, not a single one had smashed.

The Auror at the door had greeted her with a nod - not respectful, more lazy - and directed her to the first floor with a bored grunt and an offering of both gloves and shoe protection. Hermione duly slipped them on, attempting to ignore his foul gaze, before shoving past him into that pink Hell. She veered off towards a chorus of meowing, pausing to order the cats sent to the lab, before getting back on track. She was careful not to touch anything as she climbed the stairs, not for any significant forensic reason but more because the pink was so sickly it could have been contagious.

"Is that Hermione?" a voice called from within the first room on the left, a door decorated with yet more cats. One gambolled across the bottom of the frame chasing a ball of twine, its eyes dull and glassy.

"It's me," she responded, stepping over a shoe strewn carelessly in her path. The room was obviously the crime scene, or at least the dump site, for scraps of shredded material scattered the bed, claw marks cutting through to the foamy interior of the mattress. A certain stink hung in the air, of deteriorating flesh and the final bodily functions of death, which Hermione had recognised from the stains on the clothes. A matching one spread out across the middle of the mattress, dark yellow against the white sheets. Lamps, objet d'arts and jewelry scattered the floor where the cats had attempted to catch their owner's attention, before giving up and attacking the woman herself.

"Alright, love," Harry called from the opposite side of the bed, demurring any more physical greeting by simply raising his gloved hands in explanation. "We wondered when you'd arrive."

"The Gods forbid we start anything without you," his partner muttered bitterly, his attention determinedly fixed on the remains of the bed so that all she could see of him was his sleek cap of platinum blonde hair. Draco Malfoy had at first seemed an odd choice of partner for her best friend, but once they'd spent a half-year getting all their petty squabbles off their chests, they'd turned out to be one of the best teams the DMLE could boast. Harry's innate empathy and dueling skill meshed perfectly with Draco's keen observational skills and Slytherin cunning, despite their prickliness together. If she could choose, which she couldn't, she'd have liked to have been on their cases permanently, simply for the success rate.

"I was in autopsy," she told them stiffly, bristling from Draco's comment. "I do apologise if carrying out my  _actual_ duties interferes with my solving your cases for you."

Harry shot her a disappointed look. "Don't be like that. Either of you. You're adults - at least pretend to like each other."

Hermione sniffed, but inclined her head to Malfoy, and he did the same. Disagreement thus settled, Hermione took another turn of the room.

"We think she died here," Harry said, pointing at the bed. "There's no sign of foul play, or, not that we can spot. It's difficult, with the cats."

Hermione leaned over the bed, brushing her fingers against the stain and sniffing her hand. Yep, urine. A quick  _scourgify_ to her gloves and she moved to the top of the bed, where pillows had once sat but had long since been tossed to the floor. The sheet, or what was left of it, here was a pure white in contrast to the slight grey tinge of the rest, which in normal circumstances Hermione would have attributed to the lack of exposure to air, but simply could not in this case.

"Someone magically cleaned this section of sheet," she informed them, straightening back up. "You'll want to send it for residue testing."

"And  _why_ do you think that, Granger?" Malfoy asked, his voice automatically unpleasant. It was a reflex by now, she was sure.

Humouring him, she pointed to the stains further down. "Faeces, urine and other viscera stain both sections, sure - that's as it should be. But what about the other stains? More domestic ones? Down here," she moved back a few steps to indicate the area, "not only is the sheet discoloured, but you find evidence of menstrual leakage, faded by washing, and sweat, and discolouration from contact with other items. Up here, however," moving again, she gestured to the paler section. "Beneath the run-off from the corpse, there's nothing. Evidence of a strong cleaning charm, perhaps strong enough for its signature to be found in the threads, given how little traffic this room has seen since it occurred. If you ask me, someone killed the decedent here, in her bed, and then scrubbed away the evidence before leaving her to rot. Which brings me to the reason I'm here."

Stepping back, she made purposeful eye-contact with first Harry, then Draco. "You want evidence of foul play? It's in the morgue. Doctor Gillies and I, upon examination of the body, found evidence of runes drawn upon the body. It's difficult to tell when they would have been done, without a complete picture, but the lack of fading suggests they were a recent addition." She took a deep breath, then looked directly at Harry. " _Yr_  was possibly among them."

" _Sonofabitch_ ," Draco spat, while Harry's eyes hardened.

"I'd like to reiterate that we cannot confirm that they were used in any manner, but the layout and use of the runes does point in the direction of…"

"Sacrifice," Harry spat, as if it were a swear word. "Fucking Hell, this is just what we need." He strode to the door, a determined expression on his face as he shouted, "Foster! Bring in the landlord, the neighbours, the fucking  _Gods_ if you can - this case just became Priority One!"


	3. Part One: Chapter Three

**1000.**

Entering the house upon return from the Ministry, she threw her cloak to the side, her hands coming up to pull off her  _blasted_  veil. A maidservant, new, hurried from the shadows to pick up her leaving, dropping the cloak onto a hook and waiting patiently by her side for more, which were not a long time in coming.

Her flesh was covered from head to foot, and she hated it. Hated this whole, respectable charade. From birth, she'd cultivated her beauty, honed it, used it to her best advantage. That society demanded she cover herself was insulting, demeaning. Her fingers slipped in her frustration, a sharp sting of pain radiating outwards from where one of the clips sliced into her finger.  _Of course_ , she sighed in her own head. Of bloody course.

The veil fell from its holdings with a heavy  _thud_ , the maid scurrying forward to whip it from in front of her with the least disturbance possible. She hardly noticed, observing herself closely in the mirror.

Her skin remained pale, porcelain-perfect. The faintest lines of age met her eyes, but only a spare few: she'd had little enough cause for laughter in her lifetime. Clear, intelligent eyes gazed back, taking stock of any imperfection, of which there were none. Her hair was naturally two-tone, the silver-blonde of her mother's family fighting an eternal battle against the dark chestnut of her father's to create a striking, recognizable effect; one reason why the veil had become so handy a crutch.

Nodding her satisfaction, she proceeded down the hall to the kitchen, a room she rarely frequented, even less so since her husband's inconvenient demise. Then, she had made small treats for the two of them, sneaking down, giggling, in the middle of the night for sustenance, only to be chased back to bed halfway through. She'd taught her son to bake, too, when he was young, before his interests had turned more in the direction of his father and his magic.

Now, she had no call for the kitchen, her servants cooking for her when she had need. Only one House-Elf had remained after the War, and their family reputation was so poor among Elf-Kind that she'd had to resort to Squibs. It was a lowering situation, but what about her life was not so?

In the kitchen, Cook stirred carrots into a stew, ignorant or perhaps uncaring of the fact that her mistress loathed both the root and the dish. She paused, considering taking action, but was unable to find the energy. Most of her staff were so, finding new ways to defy her each day, to punish her for what they perceived as her role in the collapse of their lives. One would think they would be closer, considering how their fates had aligned, but no.

Ignoring the taciturn servant, she passed through into the pantry, where she traced several runes on the wall. Old, mangled runes, adapted from the Norse, the meanings of which were unclear and could only be deciphered by herself or one of her group. Small security measures that went a long way, as far as she was concerned. As she finished the last letter with a flick, the floor rumbled and groaned, a grating signifying the opening of a large, black hole. About four feet square, it was only large enough to permit the passage of a child or a slender woman, and while the size might be enlarged slightly, it would never allow a gentleman's entry - by design, rather than accident.

A quick step forward and she fell into the abyss, her silver-blonde hair flying about her shoulders as she travelled through the darkness. Not unlike the Floo system, she could catch snatches of life as she passed, of arguments, of cooking, of learning, lovemaking of all types. These snippets were provided of life in which the darkness had been allowed to encroach, such as her own.  _What_ , she wondered blithely,  _would one hear from my home?_ In the old days, laughter, some scolding, her son's supercilious tone as he lectured his toys, her husband's seductive murmur, her throaty laugh. During the war, they would have heard silence, the never-ending silence of all-encompassing terror, the type that smothered and broke whomever was in its path. Now…

More silence, she supposed.

She missed the old days. People didn't seem to understand that a Dark family was not inherently evil; at her trial, the prosecutor had attempted to paint her life as some den of iniquity, where she whored herself out to the most powerful men while her husband tortured Muggles in the dungeon, but that was not so. They had been  _normal._ They'd had squabbles, and fun, and days out to the sea, and dinner parties with their grandparents. Her son hadn't been raised on a knife's edge, continually being threatened or abused; he'd been  _normal._ Pampered and spoiled, perhaps, but he  _was_  her only son.

The only difference in the lives of them and the next best Light family had been that they'd not bothered to pretend. They had lived safely in the knowledge that they were better than all the rest, and would stay that way, using any means necessary to do so.

Some things had not changed.

The journey ended abruptly, but she was used to this by now, landing with grace. She began to walk the moment she was steady, a split-second later.

She was in a cavern lit by candles, hollowed out of a cliff on some island just East of Skye. She'd never travelled there in the usual way, and so could not describe the land outside, but she was sure it was beautiful: their leader was the type of woman who appreciated beautiful things. The cavern was testimony to this, the concave walls hung with rich tapestries, the floors carpeted with plush Aubusson rugs. Through an archway in the south wall their ritual space sat entirely unadorned, but this room was comfortable, and pretty, and spoke of the days before the War had torn everything apart and the women had been everything they'd dreamed of from childhood.

Their leader, a tall, beautiful woman of a dark complexion and an even darker reputation, lay supine on an elegant chaise to her right, the rest of their sisters gathered about her as she grazed on a tasting selection of fine chocolates. Beside her, perched on the end by her feet, her second-in-command and told an anecdote that had their companions smirking. Both looked up at her arrival.

"My apologies," she began, only to be waved off by her leader, who merely shrugged her shoulders in a distinctively foreign manner.

"Did you retrieve it?"

Pursing her lips in disapproval her ignorance of societal niceties, she retrieved from her pocket a vial, in which a single hair curled obnoxiously. She'd had to ward the glass, for the magic inherent in the hair had attempted to destroy itself more than once, but with effort she had kept it intact. "Do you doubt me, sister?" Her voice was sharper than she'd intended, but their leader merely smiled, the expression all that was terrifying, seductive, powerful and more.

"Of course not," she replied, reaching out for the vial. It was pulled out of her reach, and she pouted. "Where is the trust?"

"What do you plan?" the blonde asked, calmly. A rustle of noise went around the other women as they moved to see the scene better, watching, waiting for a sign as to which way the wind was blowing at this challenge. Their leader's smile didn't falter.

"I have told you before; Dolores was a singular occasion. A blip. We shan't harm your pet Muggleborn, dear."

 _Of course you won't_ , she thought, staring into her superior's eyes.  _I won't let you._ Not that she was fond of the girl, but she owed her, and her debts were always repaid in full.

"You're not backing out now, are you, lovely?" the leader asked slyly, her fingers twitching only slightly into a claw. "You were all for it last week."

"I am not 'backing out'," she spat haughtily. Their leader looked pleased, reaching once more for the vial, only to watch it disappear back into her robes. "The ritual isn't until tomorrow, however. I will keep it safe for now." When the other woman looked to argue, she raised an eyebrow. "Where is the trust, sister?" she mocked, quietly, so that only her superior could hear.

Their leader's hand fell back to her side. "Very well, then." Her voice was outwardly pleasant as she spoke, turning back to the group. "Thank you for completing your task so promptly. Now, I'm certain that the rest of you have duties to attend to, also, in preparation. I urge each of you to follow our sister's shining example." Her eyes sparked with sardonic amusement. "Return here tomorrow. Midnight." The other woman's eyes locked with her own, a threat in their depths. "Come prepared. It is all or nothing now, ladies."

And well she knew it.

The leader was the first to leave, with the others following. She stayed, lingering by the portal until the last woman had left, before heading into the antechamber.

It had been cleaned since Samhain, and thoroughly, but she imagined she could still see the gore. Hear the screams. Feel the struggling, the writhing of Dolores as she realised she had been betrayed, as they harvested her blood. So similar, she realised with detachment, to many scenes during the war, and one in particular which stood out.

Her finger ran contemplatively down the smooth curves of the vial in her pocket. She was committed to her cause, yes, but she had other commitments, too. Her son. Her life. Her debts. She would forsake not a single one.

The lights puttered out as she descended into the darkness once more.

* * *

**1125 hrs.**

Sadly, it is the reality of police work that whether or not you denote a case a priority, events will occur at their own speed, and do not take kindly to being hurried. You can rouse the whole neighbourhood from their beds, but that will not force them to have seen anything of note, nor will it magically gift them the ability to discern what details of their day are relevant to your case or not.

An army of Aurors marched across the sleepy Hampstead square, banging on doors and windows at their leisure. Many of the residents were gone, this being the sort of neighbourhood where a death in one house does not require the interference of those in others, certainly not enough to make them miss their early morning meeting/conference call to Beijing/first patient of the day/the opening of the Stock Exchange (delete as applicable). Children had been long since packed off to school, and the only Muggles who populated these houses at this precise time were second wives, moderately wealthy widows, and one up-and-coming video game designer who worked from home.

Hermione used 'Muggles' deliberately, here, for there were a spare few Wizards in the area, too. They made themselves known quickly. Aware of who had lived in this house, they'd been at the edge of the perimeter practically since it had been put up, slowly, over the course of the morning, being joined by members of the press. They were led one by one into a white canvas tent, where these overeager citizens would recount their every movement that Samhain, serving only to bore the poor Juniors forced to listen, and assure the higher-ups that none of them had been in the least involved.

While this occurred, Hermione joined Harry and Draco in interviewing Umbridge's landlord, a florid, ageing man that smelled overpoweringly of stale cigarette smoke and high-end men's deodorant. He'd appeared at the door in an ill-fitting but expensive suit an hour after they'd called him, apparently having travelled all the way from South of the river. Harry made some commiserating noises about cabbies and their ridiculous prejudices which had made his trip so needlessly long, and they settled in the drawing room, all four studiously ignoring the Aurors who swooped around them, far more than was strictly necessary for a room in which no evidence of a crime was visible.

Draco pulled a quill and parchment from his robes, settling back in his seat as Harry leaned forward confidentially, his elbows propped on his knees. "If I might ask, how long did Madam Umbridge live in this house?"

Mr. Alan Noakes smacked his lips unpleasantly, leaning back in his chair, legs spread wide and bent at the knees. One fist propped up his cheek, elbow resting on the arm of the chair, the other dangling between his legs casually. From the moment she'd met him, Hermione had had the urge to smack him, and his ease now, not to mention how he expressed it, only bolstered that wish.

"Rented it in '01, from me bruvver. August, I reckon. It'll be ahn file, if ya want ta see it."

Harry smiled amiably. "I would, if that'll be possible. I'll send someone over later to pick it up. Did you have many dealings with Madam?"

Noakes pulled a disgusted face. "Yeh. Woman was always complainin' 'bout summat. Erry' uver month or so, bitch was round, tellin' us to fix this or that. Plumbin', like it were us who clogged the drains wi' hair and shite. Nutters, she was. If ye thought she was bad during the war, ye should ha tried bein' her landlord."

Hermione shook off her profound disgust for the man with difficulty. She had, somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, labored under the impression that somehow all wizards were possessed of at least an inkling of intelligence; here sat the man who gave lie to that statement. "When did you last see the victim?" she asked with forced patience.

Noakes scratched at his crotch like another, less disgusting, person might scratch their nose while thinking. And how, exactly, had this man ended up owning a house in Hampstead? He was well off, certainly, by the looks of his shoes (not to mention his ability to bribe a cabbie into crossing the river), but his entire demeanour screamed of a man who'd never so much as touched a school book.

"'bout eight months back. Ahm not the one who talks ta the clients, tha's ma bruvver. Ahm the office bloke." He rolled something between his fingers and flicked it to the floor. "Art's in the States," he explained, misinterpreting their disgusted stares. When his hand strayed back to his crotch once more, Draco slammed his notebook shoot and stood, marching from the room without a word, his pale face tinted green. Hermione watched him go enviously.

"Did Madam Umbridge take many visitors, do you know?" Harry asked, his voice still light and pleasant, as if nothing had happened. As if he wasn't talking to an actual, living slug.

Noakes nodded, smiling unpleasantly. "Loads o' you Ministry lot. Some Widows. Men. Bunch o' men." He gave Harry a hammed-up, lascivious wink, and the insinuation proved Hermione's downfall. She pushed to her feet abruptly.

"Bathroom break, Harry," she apologised, then legged it from that pink hell.

Outside on the pavement, Draco was leaning against the wall, stood just close enough to a pack of smoking journalists to inhale their second-hand smoke, but covering himself with a Notice-Me-Not, so that they wouldn't ask questions. He made eye contact, unconcerned that she could see him.

"Oi, Granger!" someone in the crowd of press shouted, which stirred the lot of them into mutterings of 'that's Hermione Granger', which quickly evolved into more shouts for her attention. Sighing, she stepped down the stairs and across toward Draco, who looked panicked at her approach.

"Malfoy, Malfoy!" the shout was taken up, and he scowled as his charm failed with a merry little  _pop._ Mumbling quietly, he grabbed her arm once she was close enough and dragged her down the street a ways, until the press realised that they weren't going to give a statement and if they moved they might miss something. They trooped back, uncowed, and they were alone.

"Do you have cigarettes?" Draco demanded, looking at her pockets eagerly.

"You don't smoke."

"I will after today, I'm sure. How is it possible that she could be more of a pain in death than in life?" Draco growled impressively at a bystander that threatened to encroach on their space, sending them skittering backwards. "I'd only just gotten out of the news!"

Hermione smiled bitterly. "If you will insist on jilting the country's sweetheart, you can hardly expect your privacy. It could be worse - at least you're not that spinster Muggleborn who works with dead people for 'sinister and as-yet unrevealed purposes'." This, she quoted from the latest edition of the Prophet. Draco grimaced.

"Malfoy Monster Macerates Millionaire Millie' was pretty bad, you have to admit."

"Yes,  _grammatically._ It's also terribly unclear - I always thought your father was the family monster." She looked at him blankly when he snorted a laugh. "What's next?"

Malfoy pulled out his notebook to flip through, the pages of ink blurring together with the speed. "Jenkins is pulling together a list of her known associates for us to interview, which, according to her little black book, is every departmental head from '71 onwards. No way to tell as yet whether she was actually close to them, or if it was just arrogance that had her writing them in there.

"Fudge is dead, or we'd be knocking on his door right now."

Hermione checked her watch, ever surprised that time marched onwards while she wasn't looking. "The Doctor will want me back for the full autopsy. He'll want to focus on the marks, I expect, and find more evidence of the ritual. Once I know the full extent of things, I'll let you know."

"Before or after you look into it yourself, Granger? I'm not waiting two weeks while you read your way through the Ministry Archives."

Hermione shot him a sour look, pulling her coat around her more securely. "Let me know if anything changes," she ordered, and apparated away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Quick Note; I'm looking for a Beta, not for this fic specifically, but in general. Please, if you're interested, raise your hand!  
> Love, Eliza x


	4. Part One: Chapter Four

**1300.**

Gillies was back behind the table, observing as Hermione assisted Dennis Creevey in photographing the body. The younger man had come earlier, having also photographed the scene, to take pictures of the body while dressed and being undressed, and now was repeating the procedure with the cleaned, naked form. A true professional, he was one of the few people they'd interacted with who had made little comment on the woman behind the wounds, though his tightly pressed lips and lack of cheery speech said he was not entirely immune to her identity.

Silently, Hermione directed the tape measure around the body, using her wand to pull it straight across the various wounds, allowing Dennis to take a more accurate picture and, incidentally, her to better examine the wounds. Flint and his Hufflepuff sidekick had done a standard magical residue test at the scene, and she understood from the report that none of them had been magically inflicted, but once they'd seen past the gore of the cats' meal to the underlying abrasions, it seemed impossible that they could have been made by human hands.

"Exceedingly precise knife-work," Gillies observed, leaning over the wrist, where a single vertical slice had cut through flesh to sever the veins. He ignored how Dennis scowled at him for blocking his light. "Could hardly do it better myself. Fucking brilliant."

" _Doctor_ ," Hermione chastised, long-suffering.

"Better than yours," her boss replied unapologetically. "Should I get a new lab assistant? You can solve crime to your heart's delight."

"Better not, Doctor. Even murderers couldn't put up with you as well as I do." She said this in a measured tone, because she had always thought it disrespectful to argue in front of a corpse, but the way Gillies' eyes flashed with humour told her that her message had been received.

"Sacrifice, Granger. Not murder." He grinned, the expression all the more disturbing each time she witnessed it. "Agamemnon, you see?"

"It's all the same to me," she replied shortly. "And Agamemnon was a monster."

"Similar scenario. Sacrifice, blood drainage - wonder what they're keeping the blood for?"

"Nefarious purposes, obviously," Hermione muttered, snarkily, as she leaned back down over the wound.

"Sorry-" Dennis interrupted, not looking sorry at all, "But I'm done with this section. Can we move on?"

* * *

**1546.**

Hours later, Dolores Umbridge had been put to temporary rest in one of the cabinets until they needed her again, and Hermione was busily working with another decedent who'd been delivered earlier on. Umbridge might have been Priority One, but that did not mean other people stopped dying, one of whom was the elderly woman on her table.

Brought in covered in a thick black veil and shroud, it had been obvious at first glance that she had been a War Widow, one of an increasing number of women to join their ranks. They were an interesting bunch, the Widows, one which Hermione could speculate on for weeks without answer. In fact, she had, after a Wizengamot session had ended in uproar after one of their members called for a Widow to vacate her seat due to her split priorities. There was very little information available on the subject, however, as they'd become increasingly secretive over the years; all Hermione had managed to piece together was what she'd seen herself.

After the second Wizarding War, the country had been floundering. The Ministry, an institute most citizens relied upon to learn right from wrong, and whose responsibility it was to fix the world, had crumbled after being shown as the rotting, disintegrating example of modern democracy that it was. Hogwarts, a comfort and a home to these same citizens, had been flattened, its halls crowded with the dead and the un-dead, its leadership in constant dispute. In the absence of stalwart leader nor any kindly parental figure from either side, the country had embarked upon a slow collapse from which, it seemed, there had been no hope of recovery.

Until the Widows happened.

It had begun slowly, an evolution. Andromeda Tonks had taken to Hogwarts, appearing on its grounds one day in a huff. Well-meaning volunteers had been, before them, determinedly clearing rubble but with no real view as to what should happen next, or simultaneously, even. Minerva McGonagall had been locked in negotiations with the Board of Governors for days, and the blank spot where her trustworthy guidance had been remained unfilled. Andromeda filled it, giving orders, writing up plans, calling in companies to assist with the rebuilding with the sort of manic energy and determination only a Black daughter could possess. The Goblins came to rebuild the wards and structure; the half-Giants to lay the foundations. The Grindylow teamed up with shy Selkies to clear the Black Lake of debris, nursing the Squid back to health. Witches and wizards from all across the country were dragged, guilted, cajoled and sometimes outright blackmailed into putting their wands to the cause with whatever skill they had. Building, cleaning, crafting, creating - one coven in Finland painted a collection of portraits depicting the Battle to send across, that it might not be forgotten, and the Centaur mares took a hair from the heads of each of the dead to weave into a six-foot long, gleaming, animated tapestry of the lost, through which the cast of portraits could be connected to the other paintings in the school and, if required, their family homes. Arthur Weasley, who had never been wealthy enough to see his deceased relatives live again in oils and paint, had cried to be presented with such a part of his son's soul, and the resulting snapshot had been plastered on the front page of the  _Prophet_ the following day.

While Andromeda was the first such woman to effect such a change, however, she would not be the last; even while she worked to recreate Hogwarts from the ashes, other widows came out of the woodwork the length and breadth of the British Isles to do the same in their communities. Most notable was Augusta Longbottom and a collection of Wizengamot Widows, including Mrs. Greengrass, Mrs. Zabini and Mrs. Shafiq, all of whom took to the Ministry, scouring the scattered departments for signs of magical influence or the Dark Mark and depositing every single one they found on the doorstep of either St. Mungo's or Azkaban.

Mr. Burbage, who had recently gone by Mr. Spenlow, had named himself a widower, and lured a cerberus to guard Azkaban.

Mrs. McKinnon built a war orphanage.

Mrs. Goyle, at a loss, donated her house to the hospital as a recovery centre for injured fighters.

And on the list went, all of the women and men gathering under the banner of their lost loved ones, until the papers simply began referring to them as the War Widows, and Andromeda set up the charitable organization in their name.

The day she opened their sandstone Knockturn Alley offices, she stood outside, shoulder to shoulder with both Light widows and Dark, and gave what became the most memorable soundbite of the whole war period. She'd looked directly into the camera, and announced, "It was the fate of our men to fight and die; of us women, to live, and rebuild."

Since then, their numbers have grown to encompass not only widows, but young women with no wish to marry, or single women of advanced years. It became cultlike, but no less good-willed - members began to wear full-mourning or half-mourning, constantly. Their members lists were confidential, their members wearing thick veils when out on charitable business. Andromeda finally dropped the mantle of leader last year, giving up on the whole business after a public statement saying that their 'interests no longer aligned', that she 'bore no ill-will' toward the organization, and retreating into obscurity to be replaced by a faceless woman constantly veiled.

Widows commanded a certain level of respect in their society, no less than a peer. One did not touch them in public, nor did one tear away the veil. Why their privacy was so important, it was unclear, but these were the unwritten rules that surrounded them. So pervasive were they, in fact, that the whole autopsy felt  _wrong_ , in a way that it didn't on any other. Hermione was quite certain that having even Harry or Ron on the table wouldn't discomfit her as much as lifting the gauze from this woman's face had.

"Oh, my." She was a pretty woman, even at her advanced age, with steel-coloured locks tumbling around her shoulders and perfect, tan skin. Lines folded her face in a pleasing manner, but she looked young in death.

The woman had been found on a park bench in Hogsmeade, the death unexplained, and as so had been sent to them for investigation. Healer Davids, who had been called to the scene, had supposed death by old age, and it was Hermione's job to confirm that - a simple task, one that Doctor Gillies had been comfortable with leaving her to do on her own. The lack of suspected foul play meant that she was left to carry out all of the steps on her own: removing the clothing, taking pictures, washing the body, and finally the autopsy itself.

It had just gotten more complicated, however.

The woman had come to them without identification, and no wand had been found on her body to track back to its wielder, but Hermione recognised her. She had been younger then, much too young to look so old now, and most pertinently; she had died. Before.

"Bugger," Hermione swore, sighing. She stared down at the face, trying to unsee what she was seeing, but it was impossible. That nose, the elegant neck, the hair-style, even.

She cast a strong stasis over the body and left the lab, pulling off her gloves and dropping them into the incinerator as she passed. The day receptionist was at the desk in their small foyer, and nodded at Hermione as she stopped by, dropping a courtesy note for the Aurory into her 'out' box. The rules said that they needed to be notified, but not a precise timeframe in which to do so - if the woman didn't send the memos out until the end of the day, well, Hermione couldn't be blamed. She sent the note at first opportunity.

If she  _knew_ that the receptionist was lazy and  _definitely_  wouldn't send the notes out until the end of shift, then that was between her and her conscience.

Hermione excelled at playing by the rules.

She would have sent a letter, but that seemed like a cop-out. Impersonal. Instead, she caught the lift, nodding at the workers who crowded in with her, and ascended to the Wizengamot level, where she knew her quarry had an office. There was no guarantee she'd be there, but it was a wise start.

The plaque on the door was shining but old, not having yet been changed for its successor. Knowing the woman who lay within, she had been the one who'd objected to its change, rather than mere neglect. Hermione knocked brusquely twice, not able to soften it even with the knowledge of the odd news she brought.

"Come in," was called in a pleasant voice.

Hermione pressed open the door to enter a homely room, not much larger than her bathroom at home. During the refurbishment after the War, Hermione knew that the Wizengamot offices had been knocked out and rebuilt smaller with whatever funds were available, leaving room for the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes to move into the space where the old Wizengamot's disused private restaurant, lounge and smoker's bar had previously been. Level Three, just below them, now homed a Department of Familial Matters, including births, deaths and marriages, but mostly the running of orphanages and social workers providing assistance to both muggle-born children looking to integrate into their world, and magical children in difficult home environments. A good cause, to be sure, and while some of the older families complained about the lack of space in their new offices, Hermione's quarry had been delighted.

She now sat behind the desk, flipping through folders and looking completely at ease in her environment, despite being the youngest female ever to take and hold a Wizengamot seat. Auburn hair fell over her face as she looked up to smile a polite hello, and she brushed it back impatiently. "Hermione? Hi. It has been a while…"

"Hi, Susan," Hermione murmured. She nudged the door shut behind her. "Is this a bad time?"

Susan blinked at the question, then looked down, seeming surprised to find work still on the table. "Time? Is that still a thing?" Giving a humourless laugh, she indicated the seat opposite her desk while she shuffled the papers into a drawer. "Don't mind me. I've been here since the news broke this morning, going blind looking over legislation the old bitch drew up. Did you know she put clauses in most of it, ensuring it couldn't be repealed until she was no longer an active member of the Wiz? Well, dead is inactive enough for me, and Augusta agrees. Lots of work to do, though. I'd welcome a distraction. How can I help?"

Susan Bones had changed a lot since school, Hermione acknowledged. They'd met in passing in the corridors, of course, but never for long enough that Hermione could appreciate this fact up close. Always a pretty girl, now the marks of her profession lay upon her, defining the potential that had been. Her face was still soft, sweet, but her eyes were narrowed by constant squinting at laws on paper, her lips chapped from speeches and debates. Her fingers bore the tell-tale ink marks Hermione herself had worn constantly during school. Otherwise, she was a gorgeous woman - and not to be underestimated.

"It's about your aunt," Hermione said, her voice grave.

Susan cocked her head, expression calculating. "Amelia? Yes, what about her?"

Hermione kept a close eye on the Hufflepuff, measuring out her next words. "She's dead."

A bemused look crossed Susan's features, followed a moment later by concern. "Yes, Hermione - for over a decade now. What does that have to do with anything?"

Satisfied that by her reaction, Susan hadn't known, Hermione shook her head. If she wasn't involved, that made this the hard part. "No - I mean, she's dead. As of today. Her body is on a slab in my office."

Stunned, the other woman simply stared for a long time. Hermione was just getting fidgety when she seemed to come-to with a gasp, and fixed an accusing eye on her. "Is this a joke?" she demanded. "Because if it is, it's not bloody funny."

"When have you ever known me to joke about my work, Susan?" Hermione replied, not without sympathy. "I assure you, it's true. She was found this morning, and she's still in rigor. In my progressional opinion, she wouldn't have been - deceased - for more than a day."

Susan paled drastically, prompting Hermione to leave her seat and round the desk, taking the other woman's hand in her own. "It's not possible," Susan murmured, clenching tight. "She died, I know she did."

"There's more," Hermione continued with reluctance.

"How can there be more? What could be worse than this?" Without giving her a chance to reply, Susan was out of her seat and pulling on her cloak. "I want to see her."

Hermione eyed her warily. "Susan…"

"Do you know how quickly I can get your department shut down?  _Do_ you?!" Susan clicked her fingers, face fierce. "I  _want to see my_   _aunt_!"

* * *

**1723.**

"Miss Granger," Aubrey Chisholm drawled when she entered her lab once more, Susan on her heels. The sound of his voice made her stop in her tracks and pinch the bridge of her nose in exasperation. Of all the times for the bloody receptionist to decide to do some work...

"Where is she?" Susan asked, more composed from the walk. Wordless, Hermione indicated the table Auror Chisholm was blocking with his massive bulk - the man had muscles where she, with her intimate knowledge of anatomy, was pretty certain no muscles should exist. Susan strode over without even a glance of recognition for the Auror, and Hermione stamped down a smirk.

"Don't bother, Lady Bones," Chisholm said with no small amount of relish as he glared at Hermione. "You'll find nothing to interest you here."

Susan lifted an imperious eyebrow. "I should think I am capable of judging such a thing for myself."

A strong sense of foreboding slid down Hermione's spine when Chisholm looked at her again, some dark amusement in his eyes. "Let her pass, Chisholm," she ordered all the same.

"You sure you want to do that?" he asked in a mocking tone. "The joke's gone far enough. Good play, Miss Granger, in pulling me out of the Aurory, but the fun ends here."

"What are you talking about,  _fun_ ," Hermione spat, disgusted. "There is a dead woman on that table that needs identifying. Step aside!"

His mouth twisted, and he moved, revealing the table.

The  _empty_ table.

"What-"

Susan stared at it for a moment in complete silence, before turning and leaving without so much as a word, but not before Hermione caught the heartbreak and betrayal in every line of her face.

Chisholm smirked. "Jolly good show, Granger. Jolly good."


	5. Part One: Chapter Five

**1930.**

Max's was a run-down little cafe in some corner of Muggle London that Hermione had never bothered to learn the name of because she'd never actually visited. With an alley out back, accidentally convenient for Apparation, it was Hermione's favourite place simply because nobody but her chosen few knew it existed. Of course, Muggles did, but they were all policemen at various stages in their shifts and too busy with their own problems to care about hers, simply assuming from her carriage that she was law enforcement and therefore welcome. With all-you-can-drink black coffee for a fiver and a slap-up bacon buttie for three quid, no surprise it was a popular joint.

Pansy, of course,  _loathed_ the place. It didn't help that while she viewed nearly everything Muggle with the sort of suspicion one would usually employ with week-old Chinese takeaway leftovers, the thin layer of grime coating everything in the immediate vicinity of Gerry, the cook, in particular caused what Hermione liked to refer to as her 'vapours'.

As a Slytherin, however, she understood the usefulness of such a place, and deigned to visit on occasion. Desperate times. That day, for instance.

"This place is a hovel," Pansy declared as she flounced in, drawing a gimlet eye from several WPCs sat by the grubby window. "I don't see why we can't meet at that boutique in Paris. It's not like it's any further out of our way."

Hermione sighed, stirring sugar into a coffee so strong her spoon could have stood straight up independent of human assistance. "How many of your friends frequent that boutique?"

Pansy rolled her eyes. "'Friend' is a strong word. About five of my  _barely tolerated_ acquaintances go there."

"Whatever the degree of friendship, five is too many if you don't want people to know about this. And we don't. Now, what have you got for me?"

Pansy clicked her fingers in the air to summon a long-suffering waitress who glared at Pansy the whole way through the order-taking process. Hermione could sympathise. When she had retreated to the kitchen, Pansy reached into her bag and pulled out a stack of files. "Here," she grunted, dropping them into the no-man's-land between their place settings, heedless of the grease stain that immediately adhered to the bottom file. "Everything Flint, Potter, and our grand overlord Department Head Poncy Weasley is hiding from you. The  _geminio_ should last about a day."

Hermione's face lit up on sighting the files, and she grinned delightedly at Pansy. "You're a star, love," she thanked her, and pulled the lot toward her. "Highlights?"

Pansy sat back as the waitress plonked a tepid-looking cup of tea in front of her, and reached for the sugar, shaking the tiny paper sacks before she ripped their heads away and poured it into the drink. She repeated this process five times, despite Hermione's dire warnings about the over-consumption of white sugar, and stirred it in. From the look of it, very little had actually affected the drink before it sank to the bottom. "Well," she began, finally, taking a sip of the concoction. "I can tell you that Poncy has chucked his mistress."

"Of course," Hermione nodded. Sitting through Pansy's relation of gossip was part of this deal; the fact that, over time, she'd begun to see the value of it and actually  _listen_ had surprised her. She'd come to that realisation about halfway through the saga of Poncy/Percy and his mistress, Pepper, but since then she'd been keeping an open ear. "It's nearly election time."

"His third since Audrey had Molly and still he hasn't gotten the hang of it. Apparently, he sent her an owl. An owl!  _Such_ a breach of etiquette." Seeing how Hermione was nodding blankly, Pansy put on a lecturing tone as she explained, "There are two sorts of mistresses to powerful men, you know: the naive, blushing virgin type who imagine they're in love; and the jaded, in it for all they can get type, who see the possibilities. If she had been the first, then an owl would be no problem; the girl would have been too heartbroken or overcome with empathy or whatever it is you Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs feel to retaliate. But Pepper was no green girl. She knew the rules. She'll wait a few months, let him get his guard down, then strike when the moment is right." Pushing a strand of dark hair behind her ear, Pansy tutted disapprovingly, reminiscent of Molly Weasley herself.

"That's awful," Hermione scowled, somewhat outraged - not so much at the situation, more at the fact that she could see the reasoning behind Pepper's response. She'd always liked rules, after all, and disliked people who broke them without thought, but to ruin a man's career?

"That's politics, darling," Pansy drawled, clearly delighted by the state of affairs. "He shouldn't have been so cheap. With a rational conversation and a few jewels, this could have all gone away. As it is, Pervy Weasley can kiss goodbye to his election dreams, and wave hello to notoriety, unemployment and the dole. Let's see how he likes that," she finished with relish, smiling bitterly into her tea. Hermione reached over with the intention of taking her hand, but the other woman snatched it away before the motion even registered.

There was a beat of silence, during which Hermione drank her coffee. The empathetic part of her wanted to help, but she knew she couldn't. This was something Pansy had to work through for herself.

After a minute or so, Pansy spoke again. "Flint was bragging about some old woman he brought for you," she said, voice neutral. "Up in the atrium at lunch. Said she looked just like the late Madame Bones."

Hermione perked up, but kept her voice level as she said, "It seems like a bad week for 'Madame's."

"I also heard that Lady Bones spent the afternoon crying in her Wizengamot chamber."

"Perhaps she got a bad haircut."

Pansy let out an exasperated grunt. "Come on, Granger. Talk to me. This whole thing is beginning to seem a little one sided!"

Hermione sighed, lacing her fingers together around the warm porcelain of her mug. "I'm sorry. It's a delicate situation."

"I'm delicate. I'm the epitome of discretion, bitch. Talk to me."

The thought of sharing what had happened that afternoon made her tense, but then, she had never much liked to admit her mistakes. She knew it hadn't been  _entirely_  her fault. She'd spent most of the time since trying to figure out what had happened. Cursing herself for not simply sending an owl to Susan, instead allowing her compassion to override her common sense. But at the base of it, a woman's body was missing; her family devastated, and that lay at Hermione's door.

Despite her misgivings, she told Pansy the whole tale, finding with each word spoken that far from getting it off her chest, the anxiety only wound tighter. She felt like there was something she was missing, something big. But what? She'd interrogated the daytime receptionist, who'd known nothing, and was rightfully alarmed by the situation. She'd also spoken to Gillies, who cursed her for breaking the chain of evidence, but also knew nothing. She'd even waited for Katya when the sun set, only to meet another dead end as she was as characteristically uncooperative as Hermione had come to expect.

_What was she missing?_

Pansy listened with exaggerated patience, a frown flashing onto her face as the other woman reached the meeting with Susan. Interpreting the expression as chastisement for leaving the decedent alone and ignoring all protocol in order to inform Susan, Hermione groaned. "I know, I know, it was wrong to leave her alone - but you remember Susan. She  _idolised_ her aunt. If it was  _my_ aunt I'd want to know straight away, wouldn't you?"

Pansy made an 'eh' noise, but the puckered look didn't leave her face. "It's not that," she explained, her eyes sharp on Hermione's. "It's just - are you certain it was Chisholm?"

"As sure as anyone can be," Hermione confirmed, taking a tense sip of her drink. She didn't like the look in Pansy's eyes, not one bit. "Why?"

"Because we didn't get a note from you this afternoon," Pansy said, even her normally unflappable demeanour faltering. "And Chisholm spent this week in Malta."

* * *

**Saturday. 0034.**

"I thought I smelled you out here," a voice rumbled from above ground. She scowled, brushing errant strands of hair from her face as she leaned against her spade.

"Make yourself scarce, Greyback. This has nothing to do with you."

The werewolf raised his eyebrows, eyes flicking meaningfully between the bundle of rags at his feet and the deep gouge she'd made in the ground. "You're burying a body on my land. That has everything to do with me,  _Malfoy_."

Narcissa scoffed, gripping the shovel right as she dug it once more into fresh earth, wincing as her muscles complained. She wasn't used to manual labour, but then again, that was probably exactly why she had been given this task in the first place. More punishment. As if her leader hadn't done enough to her to begin with.

"You smell angry," Greyback growled, doing that disconcerting thing where he sniffed the air like the animal he was.

Irritated, she dropped the spade and turned to him, waving her hands and hissing "shoo, puppy, shoo! I can't be dealing with you right now."

"You came onto my land," he pointed out, again. "I have more of a right to be here than you do."

"I thought that one more body out here wouldn't make much of a difference. Really, Greyback, twenty-seven?" She felt her face twist into that disappointed moue she'd often worn with Lucius, when he'd come back from a revel covered in gore and try to charm her into bed. Nothing had gotten that man riled up more than bloodshed; it was most unseemly. She'd never expected to miss that about him, though. It was funny, the things you don't realise you treasure until they're gone.

Greyback flashed his teeth in a grin. "What can I say - it's a family property."

Narcissa tutted lightly, then stepped back from the spade, lifting her skirts to frown at the mud coating the hem. "If you insist on being here, you may as well help. My arms are tiring." She flicked him a beguiling look from her grey eyes, a large dose of promise mixed with a drop of feminine vulnerability: a glance she'd had perfected since puberty, and had flashed in ballrooms across the country. Never before in a grave, but new experiences were welcome in a life that was quickly turning desultory. It was a delight to be able to be this flirty, obnoxious woman again, somewhere, even if that somewhere was in the middle of a forest with the country's most notorious murdering werewolf.

Greyback's chest rumbled in something that might have been the canine equivalent of a purr. "It's like that, now, is it,  _Cissy_?"

"I don't know what you mean," she replied demurely, scrubbing her hands against her skirts in a futile attempt to get some of the dirt off. Greyback rolled his eyes but pushed off into the ditch, his movement as he arched his body and propelled himself forward with the palms of his hands in the grass as seductive in manner as her look. He was a  _marvelous_ specimen of man, to be certain, if only he hadn't been a beast.

"If I dig, you talk," Greyback ordered, walking past the shovel to her. Narcissa was about to give a sharp reply when he cut her off, lifting her with a hand on either hip to deposit her on the side of the grave. Her skirts rucked up beneath her, leaving her long, pale legs to dangle to the earth, a view that the werewolf took a moment, but a moment only, to appreciate. He backed off, lifting the shovel and digging into the ground, seamlessly lifting a load of earth, roots and insects on the backswing. "Who's the stiff?"

"Amelia Bones," Narcissa replied coolly, tilting her head to watch the man work.  _Delightful._ She was widowed, not dead. "Poor woman had a heart attack."

Greyback shot her a look from beneath the long, knotted hair that had fallen in his face as he worked. "Bones, Bones… didn't we kill her already?"

Narcissa arched an eyebrow. "I beg your pardon, Greyback. I think you'll find that  _I've_ never killed  _anyone."_

He waved an impatient hand. "Don't be a bitch."

Narcissa pouted prettily, but continued, "Yes, 'we' did. Then, well - the ritual happened, and she died again, as you can see."

"Of a heart attack," Greyback repeated sceptically. "If that's true, then your ritual can't be that good."

Narcissa raised a shoulder in a fluid shrug. "There are some complications to work out, to be sure. We are getting there. It's complex magic."

Greyback paused in his digging once more, the soft  _shush_ and grind of his spade tapering off into the night. "Oh, aye, I see," he said, as if he did not see at all. "So. If this is old Millie Bones, then why didn't you just put her back where she came from?"

"Because, of course, the other one's still there."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My general headcanon for the Malfoy family is that while they're these cold bitches to the general public (see: peasants) in private and with their friends they're just fucking crazy. Like, Lucius is a borderline (not even borderline) sexual deviant and Cissy is basically his handler, except most of the time she's just egging him on because she's a Black and it's just fun, while Draco is in the background, confused and just, like, "please, make it stop".  
> That being said, I'm toning it down for this story because it doesn't really fit the mood. Sadly. But we'll get some loopy Narcissa because I love it.


	6. Part One: Chapter Six

 

* * *

**0200.**

" _I don't know what you're talking about, I don't know!"_

 _A lie, screamed to the heavens, almost a prayer. Her head was full of them, lies and prayers._ Please, let me die,  _she cried, into the red and black._ Don't let them know.

" _Liar!" was shrieked back, venomous. Angry. The word pulsed violet behind closed lids as her spine arched to breaking point under the assault._ Yes _, she agreed, her thoughts bordering on hysterical._ I lied. I always lie.

_Years and years of lies, piling on her. She'd share those, she thought, but not the important ones. Those, she buried deep beneath the heap, hidden and safe. Nonsense began to muddle the air as she confessed; she set fire to that, she stole this, she broke him, she hated her. Her words ran together, babbling, until there was sobbing, just sobbing, but she felt lighter, happier, stronger for it - the secret remained, her mind impenetrable, her boys safe._

_But the demanding voice, throaty and sensual, cut through, laughing. "Oh, no, girlie - don't you rest," it taunted, breath hot on her ear, intimate. "We're not done yet."_

* * *

Another early start. Hermione had slept for less than an hour before her Floo was jingling once more, and to add insult to injury, the Muggle phone by her bed was screeching too. It seemed the Gods had something against proper sleeping cycles. Or, at the very least, hers.

"Another body?" she greeted the Floo-caller, opening the connection with a slash of her wand. The phone rang off as she pulled on a robe, but the bell picked up again seconds later. "At this time? I'm changing my bloody contract."

"Hermione?" A head appeared in the hearth, but not at all the one she'd expected. Hermione gaped as Susan Bones peered up at her.

"Susan -  _Merlin."_

"I know it's late," the other woman said briskly, glancing around her at the one-room flat Hermione was staying in with confusion. "I just had to call. About earlier today-"

"Oh, Gods, Susan, I'm so sorry - I can't articulate how terrible I feel…"

Susan made an impatient gesture with her hands, cutting Hermione off. "I believe you, Hermione. About that, and about my aunt. You can be a vindictive bitch sometimes but never, I think, to me, or about this."

Hermione gaped. "Surely, you're not going to just…"

"Take your word for it? Certainly not. I called on Nossie, a Necromancer I know - okay, fine, the  _best_ Necromancer I know - that's where I've been all night, we just got back. He says - yes, Nossie, I  _know_  - he says that there has been some powerful magic worked on her grave recently. Necro magic."

Hermione was already in action, reaching for her coat. She'd never met a necromancer before, and this wasn't the best scenario for it, but she couldn't deny that part of the excitement running through her veins could be attributed to this. They were hermits, mostly; their power mysterious and morbid, most of Wizarding Society feared and loathed them until their specific talents were required. If Hermione had thought  _she_ faced backlash for cutting up their relatives, that was nothing compared to the men and women who could reanimate them.

"Can I come through?" Hermione asked, tossing a spare wand into her waistband and hiking her bag onto her shoulder.

"Yes, of course, I'll just clear the way - what  _is_ that noise?"

Hermione raised her eyebrows, then realised her phone was still ringing. It had been repeating for so long, Hermione had simply tuned it out. "Right, I'll just be a minute, keep the connection open."

"You have five minutes before the wards shut it down."

Impatient, Hermione crossed the room to answer with a sharp 'yes?'.

"Miss Granger?"

She frowned at the accented voice on the other end of the line, trying to place it. "That's me. Who is this?"

"I am Sanguini, Miss Granger. You recall me?"

"Hermione? What  _is_ that?"

Hermione flapped at Susan to bear with her before shutting herself in the bathroom, a sinking feeling in her stomach, no matter how hard she tried to shove it away. Yes, it was stupid o'clock in the morning, but when else would a vampire call? "Yes, sir. How can I help you?"

"You need not call me 'sir', little one," Sanguini purred. Hermione shivered. From experience, she knew their kind didn't  _mean_ to disturb her like this, but they just did, and couldn't help it. There was simply something… Unnatural, about them. Wrong.

"My Katya has a message for you. Some helpful information that she now sees fit to share." Better than the purr was the hardness in his voice then, more comfortable. "You had an unwelcome visitor in your workplace, yes?"

"Yes," Hermione responded, her eyes straying back to the door. The Floo wouldn't remain open for much longer, she really needed to go…

"I hear that you are busy, so I shall be brief. This person was an older woman, not sexually active, wearing cheap men's cologne. Katya could also taste the essence of crushed beetle carapace."

"A strong glamour potion," Hermione realised, not noticing that she had said the words aloud. "It wasn't Chisholm."

"I do not know who this person is, but I trust that you have some idea of how this fits."

Hermione felt an idea percolating in her mind, not quite ready to come into view but there nonetheless. She thanked Sanguini with more warmth than she had done moments earlier, and his voice was pleased when he replied. "I am glad to have been of assistance, little one. Be assured that there will be no such delay in the future. Rest well, Miss Granger."

"Thank you, Sanguini," Hermione murmured as she opened the door again, dropping the phone back into its cradle the exact moment the fire sputtered out. Groaning, she headed for the door.

* * *

**0310.**

"Susan?"

Hermione pushed through the flames to step out into a well-appointed drawing room in Susan's luxurious London flat, inherited from her Aunt upon her death. The first one. The ceiling was moulded in the way of older buildings, and suspended perhaps three feet higher than Hermione's own, which in the daytime would work as a light trap but in the night gave the impression of standing in a well-furnished cave, a feeling only enhanced by the candlelight flickering on every surface. Heavy curtains blocked the night sky from encroaching, though Susan had one lifted in her hand, peering behind it as though the view might hold the very secrets of life.

She glanced over her shoulder at Hermione as she stepped from the hearth, a wordless vanishing spell cleaning the ashes from her robes. The redhead was pale, drawn, and a shadow of the bustling, powerful woman Hermione had met that morning. "Ah, you made it. I wasn't sure if you would find a way, and no-one was answering your Floo."

Hermione gave a wan smile, going to move closer, then stopping when she spotted the room's other occupant.

His clothes were so dark that they blended into the shadows dancing the outskirts of the room, his face a ghostly white that at first she'd assumed was another painting - the room was filled with them. If he hadn't moved, she wouldn't have known he was alive. He was tall and slender with bony fingers poking from the ends of his sleeves and a mop of dark hair that brushed his collar. This must have been Nossie, Hermione thought, though the idea that someone might have assigned so fond a nickname to such a ghoulish man was jarring. His very stillness spoke of the grave.

"I'm sorry about the dark," continued Susan, stumbling over her words. "Nossie can't bear much light, lately."

"It's no problem," Hermione turned a polite, professional smile on the man in the corner. "I'm no stranger to photophobia. Is it very bad?"

No response from 'Nossie'. Hermione waited a moment, then turned back to Susan, unfazed. "Now, you said you'd visited your Aunt's grave?"

Susan moved to a sideboard and began to fiddle with the decanters laid out there, her fingers nimble as she picked up one, then another, peering at their contents with pursed lips. "Yes, quite. Did you want a drink?"

"Water, please." It was more to give the woman something to occupy her than anything else, for her old friend was shaking slightly where she stood. Hermione eyed Susan with concern as she picked up a cut-crystal tumbler and poured from a nearby jug.

"Where were we-" Susan looked a little lost, stood holding the glass. Something had really spooked her.

"Why don't we sit?" Hermione suggested gently, indicating a nearby cluster of chairs. "You can start from the beginning, explain everything."

Susan nodded her head, glancing back at Nossie, who jerked forward in an ungainly fashion. The shadows clutched him as if fighting his exodus, but he managed to pull free, his footsteps stunted as he joined Hermione by the chairs. Susan was the last to reach them and the first to sit, primly straightening her trouser legs before crossing them at the ankle. Hermione sat mainly because Nossie looked as though he might stand forever if she did not. The group, she realised as she looked between them, was an odd one, with a pervasive chill hung in the air that she attributed to Nossie's queer presence. Certainly, she and Susan had never been this awkward together before, for all their unfamiliarity. But the coolness was too similar to the chill of the grave for Hermione to be uncomfortable, so she embraced it.

"You visited your Aunt's grave?" she asked, turning her body to the side to encompass the both of them at once. Susan and Nossie shared the couch perpendicular to her armchair, right at the end of each, but their body language was comfortable, as though they'd known each other a long time.

Susan sipped the drink she'd poured for Hermione absently. Hermione didn't begrudge the woman it - obviously she was very shaken, and needed something to hold on to. It was a familiar sight among the families of victims. "I went alone after work. It sounds fantastical now - I might have been imagining things, really. But…" she took another sip, then looked at the glass as if she wasn't sure how it had gotten there. "Usually I visit her when I'm having trouble, or I need advice. Just being close to her seems to help put my thoughts in order, give me solutions I would never have thought of on my own. That's what it was like when she lived, you know. She'd never wanted children of her own, and we didn't always get along, but she was always there with me, always pushing, always wanting the best from me."

Susan wasn't a crier, but she brushed a tear from her eyes at her reminiscences all the same. "It sounds so ridiculous, but after what you said - I just didn't feel her, today. It was like the grave was empty."

Hermione looked across at Nossie, who stared blankly in Susan's direction. On the cushion between them, Susan's hand strayed towards him. "So you called-I'm sorry, but what should I call you? 'Nossie' seems very personal."

"Edmund." The word was so low, one sharp syllable, that Hermione didn't catch it at first. It was only after her mind had turned over the sound - more like a gunshot than a word, in actuality - that she realised what he'd said. Her eyebrows twitched upward marginally.

"Edmund?"

"We call him Nossie," Susan explained with a food look to him. "Ever since I was a kid. Like Nosferatu - my dad thought it was hilarious, apparently. You know, allergic to the sun, barely eats, generally sinister reputation?" This was obviously a speech she'd given a few times for it flowed much more naturally than the rest of her words, and she even punctuated it with a little laugh.

Nossie - Edmund? Strangely, Nossie, for all of its cutesy kitchness, seemed to suit him far better - didn't seem offended. His manner was almost paternal as he smiled back at Susan, though it was not a pretty sight at all.

"You called Edmund from the cemetery?" Hermione confirmed, resisting the itch in her fingers that cried out for a quill.

"I sent a Patronus, asking him to come by. I'd been considering it since I left your office, but it seemed premature. I suppose I thought that, if I went to the grave and all seemed well, then I could write it off as a cruel joke." She gave Hermione an apologetic look. "Maybe I hoped that would be the case."

"That's understandable," Hermione agreed, shaking off a brief stab of offense. "And Edmund arrived shortly after?"

"As soon as he received my message," replied Susan, somewhat presumptuously. How did she know that, after all? Nossie could easily have received the message, then taken the time to finish a sandwich, write a letter, walk his dog, wank - stranger things had happened, to Hermione alone.

She bit the inside of her cheek in irritation. There she went again; picking at things that were none of her business. It pushed the line from curiosity into obsession. What did it matter to her how long it had taken for the Necromancer to arrive? It was hardly prudent.

"Ten minutes," Nossie said, as if he could read her mind. "I was in London."

"Thank you," she breathed, more relieved to have the answer than she should have been. If she'd been able to ask the question and then not received an answer, the not-knowing would have been less frustrating, for some reason. It was probably a remnant from her school days. "And then..?"

"I have the ability to sense the dead," Nossie informed her in his abrupt way. "There is a body in that grave - that of the Honorable Lady Amelia Bones, of this I am sure."

Hermione sensed a 'but' coming, and it did.

"However, her essence was missing - not her soul, you understand, which had passed long ago, but her essence. The imprint of her on this plane. This would usually be attached to her body, able to come and go, but the tether-" he made a sinister snipping motion. "Snapped."

Hermione frowned thoughtfully. "What does that mean?"

"Put simply, it means that someone has moved the connection elsewhere." Nossie was in his element now, his long, thin fingers steepled on his knees as he spoke about his craft. "At length, it is more complex."

"Do, go on," encouraged Susan.

Nossie seemed to settle in for a long lecture. "Common knowledge is that a person's soul departs their earthly shell upon death; this is true. Where they go, I do not know; I am no Medium. The dead are my specialty, and a soul cannot die. It is irrelevant. What remains, forever, is the essence: a shade of the person who has died, an imprint of their memories, their person, their emotions. Such is why Susan experiences such enlightenment upon visiting Amelia's grave, such is why people the world over go there for peace, reassurance, a reminder of that love.

"This is not the real 'person', but a mere echo. An echo, however, is still a sound, and so the essence remains a part of the person. It can be manipulated, just as the shell itself might."

Nossie looked directly at Hermione for the first time, and she realised that his eyes were green. For some reason, that particular detail struck her as inexplicable. "Inferi are created by removing the essence from a corpse and replacing it with Dark Magic and will. Reanimation occurs when one forces the essence to return to the body and boosts the system with Death Magic. So on and so forth."

"But her body remains in the grave," Hermione pointed out.

Nossie nodded sagely. "Which leaves a few necromantic options open: creating a ghost; summoning a spirit guide; to name but a few. Considering, however, the appearance of a body, there is only one real possibility."

He stopped speaking as if that was the sum total of what he had to say, and Hermione had to stop herself from snapping at him. He obviously had very little experience socially; she couldn't hold that against him, considering what he was. "What is it?"

Nossie blinked as if surprised that she needed to ask. "Why, a golem, of course."

 _Of course_ , she snarked in her own mind.  _Why on earth didn't I think of that? Oh, wait._

"Golems don't exist," Hermione informed him with slitted eyes.

"Neither does your second corpse, apparently. And yet, all signs point to both as truth." Nossie raised a thin eyebrow. "Golems are rarely used nowadays because of the sheer amount of magical power needed to create one, and their life is not long enough to be of use. Their creation requires a mix of blood magic and death magic, and the first must be given willingly. Very few witches are powerful enough to bother."

"Witches?" questioned Hermione, curious. Most wizards, after all, barely used the word unless they simply  _had_ to, preferring to refer to all Magical people as 'wizards', to all magic as blanket 'wizardry' (see: Wizarding Britain, Wizarding World), and tended only, in familiar interactions, to use 'witch' as either a possessive pronoun - " _My_  Witch" - or an expletive - "that utter  _witch!"._

"Creating Golems is another way of fostering life, which is a solely feminine area," Susan murmured quietly. "Dark or light, few men are able to create a vessel for consciousness that has its own beating heart."

Hermione nodded as if this meant something to her, and made a note to look it up. This, along with Sanguini's news, made the likelihood of a female perpetrator extremely high - now, if only she could grab a werewolf to bring into the lab to sniff around a bit, she could solve the whole mystery, even if none of it would be admissible evidence before the Wizengamot. After all, werewolves, vampires and necromancers made up the unholy trinity of the Wizarding World - or, as a certain past Minister with a penchant for old-fashioned headgear would say, the 'scourge'.

"How certain are you that this is what happened?"

"One hundred percent," Nossie replied easily, pulling a bundle of velvet from his pocket. "I found this by the headstone."

Using the tip of her wand, Hermione pushed the top two flaps of fabric away from the centre, and the whole thing fell open. "Oh," Hermione, startled, said dumbly. "I see your point."

Lying in the centre of the square - possibly a handkerchief - sat an old signet ring, the type that a man would wear on his ring finger but a woman on her thumb; a dried posy of flowers, purple and red; a half-burned picture, out of which a young boy waved merrily; and finally a lock of hair, copper-red and soft, tied with a pink bow. This, all mixed with a grey ash as soft-looking as the hair.

"You see?" Nossie pointed out tonelessly. "Sections of bone, to anchor the essence as it moves; items of sentiment, as a lure; the picture-"

"Symbolic. Severed ties." Hermione stared for a while at the heap before her, not noticing Nossie's chastened expression until she glanced up. "We covered it in the rituals module of Ancient Runes," she told him apologetically.

"Then you know the basics."

"Quite." With a flick of her wand, Hermione bundled it back up and cast a protection ward about it to keep it intact. "We'll need this as evidence."

There was no quarrel from Nossie, but when she turned to Susan, the woman was pale. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head soundlessly, then leaped to her feet, darting out of the room. Hermione heard her feet on the stairs, then a wail from above. Hermione moved to go to her, but a hand from Nossie stilled her. After a moment, the sound of footsteps came back downstairs, and Susan reappeared, looking nauseous.

"They were in the house," she gasped, shivering. "Recently-that picture used to be on Auntie's desk. It's gone. But it was only there last week!"

"Susan-"

"You should leave, now," Nossie ordered abruptly, getting to his feet and crossing the room to join Susan. "Keep the bag."

Hermione climbed to her feet, still watching Susan. "I'll let you know if I-"

"Yes, yes, do so," Nossie snapped impatiently, still standing half a foot away from Susan. Hermione didn't want to leave her obviously distressed friend the the company of this emotionally stunted man, but clearly he wasn't going to let her stay. Biting her tongue, she shook her head.

"I'll be in touch," she assured Susan, ignoring Nossie's warning look. Then she took the Floo home.


End file.
